Etymotic EVO Impressions
Hey guys, the EVO demo unit arrived today. As usual, I’m going to eschew from commentary on the physical aspects. I think others will cover those much more in-depth than I care to. The only thing I will comment on is the cable. It is the thinnest cable I have seen on an IEM; I really hope this gets an update because it tangles like mad. Listening impressions are from about an hour of listening off of my DX300.
https://precog.squig.link/?share=Etymotic_EVO
As expected from Etymotic, EVO’s tuning is pretty competent; it falls close to what we’ve seen from Etymotic’s other IEMs. Bass is somewhere between the ER4XR and ER2XR in terms of quantity. It’s solid, clean BA bass. This is a reference-oriented IEM, so most will be familiar with the flat lower-midrange contrasted to an elevated upper-midrange. This results in leaner notes and a more upfront presentation, but should sound quite transparent. The weakest point of EVO’s tuning is the treble response. I had to run a couple sine-sweeps to confirm what I was hearing. In this case, I think the graph mostly depicts what I observed. You have a peak at 8kHz in the mid-treble, a dip after this point from roughly 10-14kHz, and then an aggressive rise to 15-16kHz. However, the amplitude of 15-16kHz is not high relative to the lower-treble. So while it’s fairly noticeable in a sine sweep, the EVO generally comes off lacking air. Not a bad tuning overall, but I think some of Etymotic’s other stuff has the EVO beat in this department.
For technicalities though, the EVO is probably the best of its brethren. It handily out-resolves my ER2XR and sounded about par with the Moondrop Blessing 2 - for resolution at least - from a brief comparison. Imaging is a small step forward from the other Etymotic IEMs; otherwise, the EVO seems to maintain the compressed center-image (therefore, lack of depth) that I noted on the ER3XR and ER4XR. Surprisingly, I want to say the EVO has pretty good dynamic contrast. It doesn’t sound as flat as the ER4XR does from memory. If you’re sensitive to BA timbre, you’ll want to avoid the EVO. It’s got quite a lot of grit.
Good stuff overall, I think. Whether the EVO’s $500 solid is more up for debate, as the market is just so competitive these days. I’ll refrain from dropping a score for now to avoid shell-shocking any new readers to the thread, but I think most can guess where I’d place it.